Yes, this is an exciting time as things come together. My postman was really interested in the build and always made a point of hand delivering every envelope and package just to get a closer look at the progress. I think I got 2 or 3 packages a week for quite a few weeks.

I miss the planning, designing, finding, buying and completing all the aspects of the build.

May update. I have about 8 coats of Perfection Plus two part poly on the deck, but still have some places where I need to fill more, so I think at least 3 or 4 more coats will be coming. I'm in dust control mode, but there is still tons to deal with. I figure when I'm ready for the last coat I'll give the deck one last complete sanding to level everything out, set up a plastic tent, wet the floor, and try to get the last coat as dust free as possible. I still have the feeling that I'm going to wind up wet sanding and polishing the whole thing anyway, so wondering if that effort is worth it. Decisions, decisions...

Here's a pic after laying down another coat (roll and tip).

Windshield brackets should be back from the chrome guy next week, very excited to see how they came out. They are the bronze Chris Craft Riviera repro brackets.

Looking great. Good luck with the dust control. One thing you might experiment with is positive pressure inside the plastic tent. This forces the dust out of the tent. In order to do this you will need a filtered source of air pumping into the tent. I can't say this will work for sure, I plan on trying this myself when the time comes.

Its been a while since I've updated. I decided to do my own upholstery, which required me to invest in learning those skills (and invest in a nice walking foot sewing machine, etc.). Here is a pic of my first completed seat cushion. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but I'm pretty happy with the results. The other matching front seat cushion is nearly complete. Now I'll start on the back cushions which will require a slightly different approach.

(EDIT: Upside down photos corrected.)

I have captured some construction details if anyone wants to see them. Basically a plywood base, 4 inches of medium density foam with a layer of polyester batting, cushion covers have rods to pull down the pleats, tied off on the bottom. Back of the cushion has some open mesh to help the seats drain and breath. Plywood bottoms have captive stainless plate nuts to allow the cushions to be attached to the seat if required.

Last edited by soedesh on Sat Nov 30, 2013 12:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Looking very nice. It is interesting the skills (and tools) we acquire to build a boat.

Regarding upside down photos. If you open the .jpg files on your computer with Windows Photo viewer you can rotate them and the software will save it in the new orientation. On my system, if I just double click on the file, it automatically opens the Windows Photo viewer.

soedesh wrote:Thanks for the advice on fixing the pics, but all my computers are Macs. When I invert the photos on my Mac, they still appear upside down when posted, so I'm not sure how to fix that.

You can open them in Preview & rotate them by selecting Tools > Rotate. Keyboard shortcuts are Command+L for Left or Command+R for Right. Then just save them. I'm sure you can do all this with iPhoto as well... I just don't like it or use it very much.